


The Best Laid Plans

by stellatundra



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Treat, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatundra/pseuds/stellatundra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nolan has a plan. An ambitious plan, one that encompasses taking down the initiative, inconveniencing the Graysons, getting rid of Aiden and sweeping Emily up into his arms. Or you know, at least getting her to acknowledge that he’s not completely useless.</p><p>But things don't work out exactly as he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meridianrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/gifts).



> I fully intended this to be a story about bamf!Nolan doing his own scheming and saving the day. It didn't quite work out that way.
> 
> Mild/implied violence and injury. Set some unspecified time in early season 2.

_You understand, they got a plan for us_  
I bet you didn’t know that I was dangerous  
It must be fate, I found a place for us  
I bet you didn’t know someone could love you this much 

Big Data – Dangerous

 

It must be that he’s gotten lazy. All this time, playing god – or at the least playing Peeping Tom – and he hadn’t stopped to see, to realise that they’ve cast him in the role of Godiva instead. Nolan huffs out a laugh that’s half a curse and crushes the mic under his heel like a – well, like a bug, he supposes. That’s the wonder of technology; however intricate it is, it can still fall prey to brute force. And a well turned Cuban heel.

He doesn’t call Emily. Not yet. No need to bother her when she’s busy running around with Aiden and framing Mason Treadwell and whatever else is on her revengenda this week. Emily’s not the only one who can make plans, after all. Nolan didn’t get to be a billionaire CEO by sitting around on his ass. Well, actually, he kind of did, but that’s one of the other wonders of technology.

There’s a nano second during which he considers the possibility that it might have been her Emily who placed the bug. He loves Emily with a fierce, bone deep devotion, but he wouldn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. And he wouldn’t get close enough to try to throw her without being pinned down by her ninja skills, so yeah. Not very far at all. Also, the thought of being pinned down by Emily and her ninja skills, kinda hot. 

But regardless, he knows it wasn’t her. Partly because he’s her go-to man for this kind of surveillance and he can’t imagine her trusting anyone else with any of her plans. And partly because he knows she just doesn’t think he’s worth it. Despite all the intel he holds on her, her secret bat-identity, every one of her little revengey schemes, a whole long list of illegal activity, she just doesn’t really see him as a threat, doesn’t see him as a dangerous player on this chessboard of revenge. Nolan’s not quite sure whether to feel flattered or dismayed. 

Either way, he’s going to prove himself to her. Prove that he can be dangerous, too. Prove that the initiative aren’t the only ones with initiative. 

He’s spent a long time playing Alfred to Emily’s Batman, Q to her Bond and he’s had enough. There’s more to him than gadgets and hacks. This is the 21st century. Nerds are cool now, right? 

Right. And he’s got a plan. An ambitious plan, one that encompasses taking down the initiative, inconveniencing the Graysons, getting rid of Aiden and sweeping Emily up into his arms. Or you know, at least getting her to acknowledge that he’s not completely useless.

 

*

“Nolan, are you completely useless?”

It is, he supposes, a fair question. After all, he is tied by the wrists to a metal pipe in an abandoned warehouse, with a black eye, a bloodied nose and a possibly-fractured shoulder, and the all-important laptop is no longer in his possession. 

But actually, so far, everything has been going pretty much according to plan. Apart from the bloody nose. That keeps happening to him, for some reason. He wishes it wouldn’t, he really likes this shirt.

“You should see the other guy,” he says from between gritted teeth.

Emily gives him a pitying look as if she knows he’s bluffing, which is pretty galling, because actually he’d given as good as he’d got. Those boxing lessons had paid off. 

“Anything broken?” She crouches down next to him. She’d dressed all in black, what he’s come to think of as her ninja outfit, and there’s a smear of something like blood on her left cheek.

“My arm, I think.” 

Her hands are quick, clinical, as she assesses the damage.

“Dislocated. I can fix that.”

Nolan winces in anticipation.

“Jeez, Ems, untie a guy first, would you? Actually, on second thoughts, don’t.”

Because this is the part of the plan that’s gone wrong. He’s supposed to be found here, tied up and roughed up, in approximately four hours. He’s supposed to be found by the _cops_. He’d taken a leaf out of Victoria Grayson’s fake-kidnapping book, considered his own skills and assets (being rich, being good with computers, tending to get beat up a lot), and formulated the plan accordingly.

Emily being here isn’t part of the plan at all. 

“Ems, what are you even doing here?”

She looks at him like he’s stupid. This happens with depressing regularity. 

“Why do you think?”

He can’t think. She shouldn’t be here. Unless she thinks he’ll squeal under torture. It’s not entirely beyond the realms of possibility, he doesn’t have a high pain threshold or secret ninja training. But he’s not going to be tortured. He’s got this situation under control. Or he did have. She picked a hell of a time to come over all ninja in shining armour. 

“How did you even find me?”

He looks again at that smear of blood on her cheek. There’s a furrow she gets on her forehead when she’s worried. He doesn’t see it often, and when he does it’s usually because she thinks somebody is going to unmask her true identity and disrupt her revenge plans, or when Jack or Charlotte are in some kind of trouble. It’s not a look he’s come to associate with himself.

Emily doesn’t answer the question. 

Instead, she leans in and presses her lips to his, soft and tender and entirely at odds with the situation and everything he thinks he knows about her. Although admittedly, several of his most treasured fantasies have started with him being tied up and completely at her mercy, this is quite unlike any of those. For a second, though, he wonders whether he’s simply started hallucinating. 

He blinks at her.

“Well. That was unexpected.”

For the briefest of moments their eyes meet and there’s the glimmer of a smile on her face. 

That’s when she pushes his arm back into its socket.


End file.
